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If there’s one thing that’s sure to start a firestorm of comments on ADVrider, it’s content featuring electric motorcycles. Some inmates are fiercely against electricity powering their two-wheelers, some take a wait-and-see approach and others think electric motorcycles are necessary and will power our machines for the future.
And regardless of these opinions, it is becoming clear that electric mobility is coming to the US and most of the world. Governments worldwide are mandating electric mobility and slowly choking the life out of vehicles powered by internal combustion engines. But is there another form of mobility that should also be under consideration?
Oliver Zipse and hydrogen mobility
One person in the transportation industry believes electric vehicles are not a long-term solution and maybe sort of a fad. Instead, he believes that ultimately, hydrogen fuel cells could power mobility along with electricity. And that person is none other than BMW’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Oliver Zipse. While Zipse is not the CEO of BMW Motorrad, BMW’s motorcycle division, he is the leader of BMW AG, BMW’s parent company. And it is his vision that is transferred to all of BMW AG’s divisions, including BMW Motorrad.
Recently, Zipse was interviewed by Bloomberg and was quoted as saying:
“After the electric car, which has been going on for about 10 years and scaling up rapidly, the next trend will be hydrogen. When it’s more scalable, hydrogen will be the hippest thing to drive.” – Oliver Zipse to Bloomberg
The danger of only electric mobility
Upping his hydrogen “hip” ante’, Zipse further said that having only one power train (i.e., battery-powered electric vehicles) available in Europe in 2035 would be dangerous.
“To say in the UK about 2030 or the UK and in Europe in 2035, there’s only one drivetrain, that is a dangerous thing,” he says. “For the customers, for the industry, for employment, for the climate, from every angle you look at, that is a dangerous path to go to.”
Interestingly, Zipse points out his concerns not only for the environment but also for the full circle of electric mobility participants; customers, the industry, and employment. But, unfortunately, he did not elaborate further on what constitutes his perceived dangers.
Early hydrogen-powered mobility solutions.
Other manufacturers are working on hydrogen-powered mobility, including motorcycles. Perhaps most notably, Kawasaki. At this year’s EICMA show, the Japanese company showed off a hydrogen gas-powered prototype motorcycle based on the Ninja 1000 SX tourer. However, its design philosophy is significantly different than other vehicle manufacturers.
Kawaski’s pure hydrogen motorcycle solution uses gas-filled cylinders to power the bike’s engine directly. As a result, at least for the prototype, several canisters of hydrogen must be carried on the bike, and they take up space and add weight, although potentially less weight than an equal equivalent amount of gasoline.
Hydrogen fuel cells
Most other designs (cars and motorcycles) use swappable hydrogen fuel cells to create electricity that power the vehicle’s electric motor. This hydrogen-electric hybrid solution use hydrogen fuel cells to make the electricity that powers the vehicle’s electric motor. Segway Ninebot’s hydrogen fuel cell solution uses this design for its Apex H2 prototype. In addition, Segway says that its solution will use swappable vertically mounted hydrogen canisters that use a simple slide-in / slide-out type of refueling arrangement. Such an arrangement would make hydrogen refueling as quick as or perhaps faster than filling up at the gas pump.
Even if hydrogen moves to fueling directly to the cells, at “gas” stations, the time to transfer the hydrogen is roughly equivalent to the time it takes to transfer gasoline.
Infrastructure
In theory, swappable hydrogen fuel cells could require less infrastructure. No slow, single-purpose electric charging stations would be necessary. All that would be needed is a place to store the hydrogen canisters safely.
And getting them to existing “gas stations” or other non-fuel-related places could be as simple as unloading fuel cells from a truck and placing them in a purpose-built storage container. Something along the lines of the liquid propane stalls you see at convenience and hardware stores. Such a setup would be cheap and easy to implement.
Segway’s hydrogen powered Apex H2 design uses swappable hydrogen fuel cells. Image: Segway Ninebot
Hydrogen mobility is “greener” than electric?
Finally, as hydrogen pundits point out, hydrogen-powered mobility is allegedly “greener” than electric mobility. Electric mobility requires hazardous chemicals to be mined, refined, and then produced into batteries that have finite lifetimes. When no longer useable, current designs require the battery’s removal and recycling.
On the other hand, water is the only emission byproduct of hydrogen power. So at least at first blush, hydrogen mobility could be cleaner than electric mobility. However, it takes electricity to produce hydrogen. So there is an environmental impact related to the production of the hydrogen itself.
Hydrogen’s expense
So if hydrogen is the cleanest form of mobility, why isn’t it more popular and in use worldwide? Well, at least for now, hydrogen production costs more than an equivalent amount of gasoline. But as hydrogen use is scaled to worldwide proportions, many experts say that hydrogen’s cost will decrease substantially, while others say its production cost will remain prohibitive.
So at least for the time being, the jury is out on whether electric or hydrogen powered mobility is a better choice to reduce environmental impacts. On its face, hydrogen would seem to offer a better range, faster fueling, and a lower environmental impact. But at the same time production costs could be higher (at least initially), and the distribution and storage of the raw hydrogen and hydrogen fuel cells would have to be sorted.
Multiple mobility solutions
Perhaps BMW Chairman Oliver Zipse has it all figured out. He says that having only one form of powered mobility would be dangerous (i.e., disastrous). And with his decision to continue BMW on the road to hydrogen-powered mobility, it appears that Zipse thinks that both electric and hydrogen mobility can live together and not to the exclusion of the other.
And if hydrogen mobility is not so far off, does it make sense to spend billions of dollars on the infrastructure necessary to generate, transmit, and charge electric vehicles?
Should we be looking at hydrogen mobility more closely? If a hydrogen-powered motorcycle had the same range as as an internal combustion engine motorcycle and refuel just as fast, would you consider purchasing one? Let us know in the comments below.
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